Natacha Atlas

Hi all! I've just joined this group, I found it essential for my African music searches :)I would like to add Natacha+Atlas although born in Belgium plays (and dances) North african musicand also Farouk el Safi who performed with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant for their album 'No Quarter" among many more discs.

GNAWA!!!

Great thread topic idea no? think about it. you know I'm too lazy to do it on my own..

Anyway, browsing through the Connections list i noticed a few Moroccan artists but no (or almost no) gnawa. El Maalem Mahmoud Guinia is a descendant of an important family of Gnawas, a superb artist who also played/s in a few settings outside the trad Gnawa ensemble, with people like Pharoah Sanders and Peter Brötzmann.Hamid El Kasri is another great Gnawa with an exceptional voice. he also played in a jazz setting (with Joe Zawinul the one that i know of) there are a bunch of clips on youtube.

My name is Iras and I'm an African rap artist...

Hey y'all,

My name is Iras and I'm an African rap lyricist, composer & producer currently living in the south of France (where I'm taking a master of computer science, major : artificial intelligence) and I'm crafting my art in American since it's my mother tongue.

Moreover I'm a storyteller and not a typical rap artist. Indeed, instead of putting an emphasis on the regular rap topics such as "girls, guns, partying, ego trips, having or making money, the street, hustling, pimpin', smoking weed, etc".I'd rather create characters, their psyches and thence put them in motion through stories.

And it brings me to my upcoming album which is about to be released on June 25th and I'm looking for some help promoting it hence your reviews and thoughts would be a huge push in that direction.

The project I'm working on is entitled "The Pilgrimage Of Samael Angel" and it will be a story unfolding from the first song (of the first album) to the last one (of the third album) because this project is a trilogy :

It is the tale of an angel who was born an impure being because of the sins of his parents.

Those sins will be eating him alive until it reaches the critical point where it'll be crippling his soul, turning him into a magnificent devil.

Ergo he was born in sin, he will live a sinful life and will subsequently die because of those sins.......I'm part of a generation that thinks certain kind of entertainment should be free therefore my entire upcoming discography will be utterly and completely FREE (ergo Samael Angel will be the first and certainly not the last).

It'll be available on different platforms (my website, iTunes, Last.fm, etc).

I've heard of you and I thought it was an opportunity to share my music and cosmos with y'all. Especially since my take on music and art is "avant-garde" because I think :

"I, as an individual, do not matter only my art does"That's why my art is shared for free and that's also why I'm wearing a mask keeping who I am in the shadow so that my art catches the spotlights.People don't need to know who I am because I only put an emphasis on my art, not myself.

Therefore I hope you'll find time to listen to the first five songs available on my last.fm page & if you do like them that you'll come back on June 25th in order to download the entire album for free !!

P.S : Sorry for the double post but I didn't know where to post hence my hesitation caused me to post the same thread twice !!